Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Dissociative excitation of HeH sup + by electron impact

Journal Article · · Physical Review A. General Physics; (United States)
 [1]; ;  [2]
  1. Department of Applied Science, University of California, Davis, Livermore, California (USA)
  2. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P. O. Box 808, Livermore, California (USA)

We report the results of an {ital ab} {ital initio} variational treatment of electron-impact cross sections for the process {ital e}{sup {minus}}+HeH{sup +}{r arrow}{ital e}{sup {minus}}+He{sup +}+H for electron energies between 21 eV, the threshold for excitation of the dissociative 1 {sup 3}{Sigma}{sup +} state, and 26 eV, corresponding to the excitation energy of the first {sup 1}{Sigma}{sup +} excited state. The calculations, which were carried out using a recent modification of the complex Kohn method, employed accurate correlated target wave functions, as well as {ital ab} {ital initio} optical potentials to incorporate the effect of closed channels. The fixed-nuclei excitation cross sections were found to be dominated by a series of sharp resonance structures. However, when the cross sections are averaged over the Franck-Condon envelope of the ground vibrational state, these sharp features are no longer seen. We conclude that the recent experiments that report structure in the HeH{sup +} dissociation cross section cannot be explained within the context of traditional adiabatic-nuclei theory.

DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
5151344
Journal Information:
Physical Review A. General Physics; (United States), Journal Name: Physical Review A. General Physics; (United States) Vol. 44:7; ISSN 1050-2947; ISSN PLRAA
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English